This is a little late, but I am still catching up on this weeks' online readings and came across this. If you have read my weekly links posts over at Raw Charge, you will know I am a big fan of the 30 Thoughts that Elliotte Friedman does, this week he has two points on St. Louis:

12. Was waiting with Martin St. Louis before our scheduled interview at the NHL junket in New York earlier this month. Holding an empty bottle of water, he pointed at a garbage can about 20 feet away. "If I get this in, I don't have to do the interview, ok?" he said. Should've known never to bet against him. He still did the interview, though.

13. St. Louis on Tampa's very positive 2010-11 season: "That's last year. No longer matters."

The first one sounds like a Marty thing to do and the second one is what I want to tell everyone who asks me in a season preview if the Lightning can match last year.
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The Lightning still have a boatload of players on their roster, so it's expected that there are going to be a lot of cuts coming to the team today or tomorrow. The first ones have come out via two of the players' own twitter this morning:

I'll update this list later if we get any more players that are cut today. The one I am keeping my eye out for, Brett Connolly, is still with the team and he tweeted that he'll be in Montreal tomorrow. Fingers crossed for him.

Summer has not been long enough and I may not completely care about the pre-season, but it's time to get back to talking some hockey, plus I found a great photo of Thunderbug.

First cuts of the pre-season occurred yesterday with the Lightning cutting defencemen Adam Janosik and Geoffrey Schemitsch. Who? My thoughts exactly. They both return to their junior clubs of Gatineau of the QMJHL and Owen Sound of the OHL respectively.

Tonight is the first pre-season game of the season and will be against the St. Louis Blues. Game starts at 8pm and can be heard on 970AM. Follow @TBLightning for score updates if you are not near a radio or my friend @Donttradevinny as he'll have a press pass. Full line combination list has been posted by Erik Erlendsson on his blog here.

This loss should hurt more* but when you take a step back to look at what this team has done in the course of the year, in the course of one playoff run, what a f-cking performance. What a battle tonight on the ice and what a battle all series long. Be proud of your team and the heart that they showed in these playoffs.

A manly hug.

Who knows if Roloson will still play next year, and if he does if that will be for the Lightning. But let's all admit, he was unbelievable in these playoffs.

Thoughts to wrap up the season will come tomorrow on the blog, but for now, I'd just like to say how proud of the team I was. The Lightning had an unbelievable season.

Game time: 8:00pm EST on CBC (HD), Versus (HD), RDS (HD) and on the radio

This is it boys and girls. This is Game 7 of the ECF. This is the game that ends your season, or gives you a chance to take on the Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup Finals. It feels just surreal even writing that.

There may not be a moment in tonight's game where you feel for sure. This game might just take us right up until the very last few seconds. Even a two goal lead midway through the 3rd period last game was a dangerous lead to have. And like we saw in Game 6, Boston will come out to pressure us, right to the very end.

This is the night for the boys to have the best game of the playoffs. It may also be the hardest game of their lives in a Game 7 in Boston tonight.

The Lightning will need everything to click tonight: their goaltending, system and powerplay. Their big guys need to have big goals. Purcell needs to keep being playoff Bergenheim.

In this series, nothing has been as you expected it at the beginning. Everyone expected this series to be defensive and low scoring, and this series has been neither. Even the coach said the same:

“Everything we expect, the opposite happens,” Tampa Bay coach Guy Boucher said. “When the series started everyone was saying, including myself, it was going to be a very defensive series, and we haven’t had very many defensive games. I think both teams have tried to adapt to each other and surprise each other with what’s coming at them. And I have no clue how it’s going to be tomorrow.”-National Post

But based on what we've seen there is a good chance we'll see a quick goal. And Boston answering back. And then more goals from each team in a battle that will go to the end. Or maybe we'll see none of that. But in the end, all we want is to be headed to Vancouver next week to face the Canucks.

Thankfully, that last non-post was not my last post of the Tampa Bay season. The Lightning fought off elimination tonight to force Game 7 on Friday.

I almost threw up during that third period. It was a combination of the nerves and the giveaways from the Lightning.

But it doesn't matter how bad Roloson played tonight, or how Hedman couldn't get it out out of the zone multiple times right? It was about Steve Downie being unselfish, being a force and attempting to make out with Andrew Ference, St. Louis for being a little ball of awesome and Stamkos for having a rocket of a shot. Also big ups to Purcell, Bergenheim Version 2.0.

Purcell opening up the scoring again early with a wicked wrist shot off of a faceoff win from Lecavalier. Boston scored two goals and went into the 2nd period up 2-1. In the 2nd period the Lightning mounted their comeback and scored two goals on the powerplay. One was from St. Louis and the other was from Purcell that came from a bobble by Clark at the line, and then to Downie who made a great pass to Purcell.

Guy Boucher face of the game:

In the third, Stamkos got another powerplay goal off of a rocket of a shot. Boston finally scored on their PP which breathed life into them for about 20 seconds before Downie and St. Louis streaked down the ice with some fantastic passing to beat Thomas and make it 5-3.

Tampa fans thought we had this is the bag at this point.

But Krejci scores his third goal of the night to give me a mini heart attack.

The Lightning make some terrible attempts to get the puck out of their zone during the last 5 minutes of the game. But time runs out for Boston and the Lightning end this game up 5-4.

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